eee EE ee SS 
NECESSITY FOR RESEARCH IN OIL-SHALE INDUSTRY. 
Se a ee ee on ee aa ed ee 
only companies in Scotland which have survived during the long years 
of competition have been those which could afford to experiment and 
had the capital at hand to conduct operations in a lange way under the 
supervision of trained technicians and executives. Once a market 
had been established for certain products, efforts have continually been 
made to increase the yield of those products and lower production cost. 
The oil-shale industry in this country will afford a field for the 
mining and mechanical eng*neer, as well as for the chemist and chemical 
engineer. Mining the shale is bound to furnish a very important item 
in the total cost of producing refined shale-oil products. In Scotland 
the cost of mining the shale is well over 50 per cent. of the total cost 
of making refined shale oils. The mining of shale oil in this country 
should offer the mining engineer an opportunity to devise new methods 
of drilling, breaking down, hoisting, conveying, crushing and the like, 
and permit the reduction in total costs by supplementing high priced 
mine labour with mechanical devices. 
Rerortr Consrruction, 
Retort construction is a problem for the mechanical and chemical 
engineer. © The Scotch retort, when carefully examined, is found to be 
admirably suited for its task. A notable feature in its design is the 
manner in which provision is made for the expansion and contraction 
of each retort in a unit, independently of any of the others. The average 
life of the best types of Scotch retort is well over twelve years; the 
“ea 
FIG. 4. OIL-SHALE LABORATORY AT BOULDER, COL. 
value of this figure can be appreciated when it is learned that the life 
of the first retorts used was only one and a half to two years. The 
mechanical engineer may be asked to adapt the Scotch retort to Ameri- 
can shales, and the writer believes it to be capable of considerable modi- 
fication for certain definite purposes. Its freedom from complicated 
- mechanical devices, long life and satisfactory performance for so many 
159 
